'ALLOTMENT HEAVEN' An Allotment blog - a journey in allotmenteering which began in February 2008.

Monday, 4 May 2009

Cock a doodle doo

No I haven't got myself some hens and a rooster! that's me crowing as I am rather pleased with myself. Yes I know pride comes before a fall and don't count your chickens etc, BUT -- and this is the first time I have tried this - OK! I'm going to tell you ! I bought some very tasty tomatoes from M & S a couple of weeks ago, so tasty that I decided to scoop out the seeds from the one I was eating. I dried them on some kitchen paper for a few days.

And now look at them, I am so pleased with myself, I know it doesn't take much to amuse me.

Well that was a little experiment for me in what people have been doing for centuries, which is just as well or where would we be today without men and woman saving precious seeds for us to grow ?

Here's an update on other things growing.

Do you remember my post about chitting sweetcorn seeds ?

Here they are now (below) I potted them on when they looked like little tadpoles. It has been successful so far they need to grow a bit more then they can get planted out in a few weeks. I sowed 2 types : Lark F1 and Ovation F1

The Munchkin squashes and the courgette plants are growing well and if the weather stays this good I will be planting them all out soon.

The Cabbages have been planted, 2 types : Wheelers Imperial & Greyhound and the green curly kale. They have been netted against the pigeons using blue water piping for the tunnel and the pond netting was from "Wilko's" (best price)Two last photo's. The first is of the beautiful Cerinthe that I have been growing since planting the seeds way back in the autumn they are just beginning to flower. The other photo is of a tree Peony that I took a photo of in my local nursery and now i am lusting after it, I have to buy it ! if they still have it.

Cerinthe

Tree Peony

That's the end of this post, until the next one Happy sowing and growing to all.

Hi Pam, and thank you for the comment. I will be going to see if that Tree Peony is still there tomorrow, but I doubt it. I should have got it when I saw it. Mind you I'm not even sure if i have the space of it, but it's soooo gorgeous.

Hi Maureen. Thanks for all the updates. I'd go out and buy that Peony, if I were you! And that's a beautiful picture you took. Of course, you know that not everything comes true to type from seed, and there's all that cross breeding stuff, so you don't always get what you think you'll get with seeds. On the other hand, you can get something better (always the optimist). Your corn is exactly at the same stage as mine so it will be interesting to compare them in the future.

Hi Prospero, it's always good to hear from you. I'd forgotten that I might not get the exact tomato that I took the seeds from, although I can't get my head around why! isn't that how the plants are grown in the first place ? enlighten me or point me to a website please !It will be good to compare the corn with yours.

You might want to check out Mendel (not Mendelssohn, I know you like music). Mendel did his genetics work based on pea plants. It's also the reason why certain plants are propagated vegetatively (by cuttings or tissue culture): this way you get the same characteristics (not necessarily so with seeds). Fruit trees are generally grafted since seed grown tree often produce low quality fruit, unless you're very lucky. You wouldn't want to start an orange tree from seed, nurse it for 10 years, and them learn that the fruit is small, dry and full of stones. PS It's been really dry here for the last 6 weeks and I'm starting to worry about my poor corn!

PROSPERO, thanks for the info, I'll google it and perhaps then I will understand. I hope your corn will be OK. I would hate to have no rain for 6 weeks, we did in 1976 I remember it well and I hated it.

JOANNE It is good when an experiment works, I hope I get some nice tomatoes from the plants. I spent 6 hours on the plot today, so didn't get time to visit the nursery to look if the Tree Peony is still there or indeed if he can get another if it's gone.

Keeping my fingers crossed that the beautiful tree peony has not been snaffled up already Maureen. Making a mental note to sow my cerinthe in the autumn so it will flower in time for our garden club plant sale next spring. I don't think that my plants will reach that stage in the fortnight or so until the big day !

JO did you put your parsnips straight into the ground after chitting? as I did and only one came up, so I started again but this time put the little chitted seeds in pots and they are all up.

ANNA it's definitely worth sowing the Cerinthe in the Autumn, I also sowed a couple later on and they are so tiny, but very sturdy though.I sowed a lot of sweet-peas in the Autumn last year as well and some are already flowering. Good luck with the plant sale that's coming up.

I have planted the chitted parsnip seeds into loo rolls. The only thing with doing this is that you do need to get them into the ground fairly quickly as the tap root grows really fast. Once it hits the bottom of the pot it will cause the parsnip to fork. I'm keeping my eye on mine. They won't be in the loo rolls long before I get them planted out.

Maureen, I want to tell you that we have no rain in the forecast (so hang in there, my little corn). What you see for 180 degrees on the north side of my house is water (Bermuda's Great Sound). The window shot from my "Papaya By The Sea" post in taken from my kitchen. The water is always different. Sometimes it looks like a lake, sometimes there are white caps. Cruise ships, sail boats, tall ships, fast ferries, jet skies constantly come and go. Who needs television? PS I'm doing a post (very soon) on the urchin (with pictures).

CAZAUX, thank you for visiting and commenting. The variety of tomato is "Roma" and I have since found out you can buy the seeds! oh well! I had fun drying and sowing them. I have potted them on and they are really looking healthy. I thought it odd that M&S put what the variety was on the packaging, I recall seeing that anywhere else.

Welcome to my Blog

I started this blog in November 2008. I didn't know where it would go or even if I would keep at it. But here I am now into April 2014 and still blogging and enjoying it. I still remember the excitement when I got my first comment, and now I even have followers, amazing !! I also follow and read a lot of brillient blogs and have made some lovely friends in the blogging world.

It's also very useful keeping a diary about my allotment and it serves as a personal record of my achievements and of my failures. In fact when I re-read some of my older entries it makes me wonder how I managed back then to find the time to get the allotment plot up to the planting and growing stage, but I did and I grew a great variety of vegetables and fruit in my first year, and it's just got better.

If you are dropping by please feel free to leave a comment or a link to your blog, or just say hello or even e-mail me.

You may like to visit my other blog as well which is about my crafts and recipies. click on the link below.

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Heart of Stones

A favourite poem

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,Enwrought with the golden and silver lightThe blue and the dim and the dark clothsOf night and light and the half-light,I would spread the cloths under your feetBut I, being poor, have only my dreams;I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;Tread softly because you tread on my dreams...